Friday, May 1, 2009

In anticipation of our earlier-than-expected arrival, I decided to accelerate my schedule for inducing lactation. Tuesday night I took my last birth control pill and last night, for the first time in almost two years, I used my old friend the breast pump.

After pumping for 5-10 minutes I was able to produce a couple of drops of milk out of each breast. That might not seem like much, but Lyn and I were both thrilled! This thing may actually work. This morning when I woke up my breasts were noticeably heavier. I let Leigh "help" me pump which meant holding onto one of the shields while I turned on the machine and later pressing the "let down" button. While she watched me, she said, "Ima, your belly button is going up and down!" I corrected her confused anatomy and told her about how I was trying to make milk for the baby. She wants to do it now too.

In other news, I've gone this week from being worried sick to feeling like we have things under control to feeling intense sadness at losing our second chance at a homebirth to feeling ready to take on the problem and back around to feeling worried sick. I'm a bit unstable.

Yesterday, Leigh and I took the bus to the hospital where we peeked in at the maternity ward and ate in the cafeteria. Leigh enjoyed herself (I let her have two cartons of chocolate milk, teddy grahams, and some potato chips in order to encourage maximum enjoyment). However she is complaining about not being invited to the birth itself ("But I want to watch Mama squeeze the baby out"). It was nice to have something fun to do with her and to start feeling more comfortable around the hospital myself.

4 comments:

G-d bless you for inducing lactation. I just put away the breast pump, and was so damn happy about it. I know how hard it can be to watch your birth plan go out the window... here's hoping for a healthy baby and mama, and for as easy a labor as possible!

My lactation plan is just to continue nursing our two-year-old, but I have definitely had moments in the past week of wanting to cut back on nursing (he's in a "I want to nurse alllllll the time" phase). It helps me to think of it as an induction plan/something I'm doing for the new baby. I definitely would hate to come this far only to lose some of my supply now.